A figure—a luminous figure that was—moved through a swirling haze of blue steam, ambling on in a seamless slow motion through a passage created by a long but strong chain of policemen; a throng of agitated bodies swayed ceaselessly behind
A small big-city window lights up at an ungodly hour. Part-drunk, part-bronchitic Mohan turns on a bulb in his one-room flat, illuminating mine. Separated by a fifteen-foot kitchen-smoke-filled alley our metropolitan windows open into each other. On some nights, his
They say it looks like glass, shining, translucent. Even cuts like glass, or so said Sarojini and her writer husband. Not writer as in someone who works with words. Writers are also supervisors in the coffee plantations of Kodagu,
The Kanobis—as the inveterate punster in me insists on calling OB vans—start at Thana Crossing, near the United Students’ Democratic Front’s graffito condemning the slaughter of innocent children in Syria that I use as a landmark to move towards the
This is probably the first time I am being cajoled into writing an article on a topic from which I haven’t maintained a critical distance. Not that critical distance helps—all forms of production, be it modes of individuation or any
Humans have a penchant for anthropomorphising things. We encounter something that resembles one basic feature of humanness—the vague outline of a figure, a pair of eyes, a voice—and we are ready to endow the thing with a whole range of
On the day the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced its 2016 Oscar nominees, it created some fervour, if not complete furore—the ancient devil had cast its ominous spell on Oscardom, rendering it, for the second time in
Almost a decade ago, when Professor Ganesh Devy first thought of a gathering of indigenous peoples, scholars and activists, he decided to call it “chotro”. In the Bhili language group, chotro indicates a place where villagers gather, a public platform,
As I write these lines (in late January, if you’re keeping track), a group of armed right-wing militants is beginning the fourth week of its occupation of a government-owned wildlife refuge in Oregon, in the northwestern United States. Drawn from
I The most popular musician of Shillong, UN Sun—rhymes with “Moon”, not “Sun”—is difficult to trace. Asking Shillong music scene regulars elicits surprised disdain. UN Sun is not on their throbbing playlists of bands and music from around the world.